Farrar's at camp, but his thoughts are with his hospitalized father
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Although this week’s Garmin-Chipotle team camp has been a series of meetings, fittings, easy rides, meals and team-building exercises, it hasn’t been all fun and games for Tyler Farrar.
The 24-year-old sprinter is staying in close contact with his family following an October car-bike collision that left his father, Ed, in intensive care with serious injuries, including spinal trauma.
“He broke 15 ribs, and when that happens, you can’t breathe on your own,” Farrar said. “He’s on a ventilator, and they won’t let him out of ICU until he’s breathing on his own. We’re still waiting for his ribs to heal up before he can begin physical rehabilitation. Unfortunately broken ribs don’t heal up very quickly.”
Farrar had already gotten more than his share of bad news before his dad’s mishap. After finishing third at the Amgen Tour of California prologue, he took the yellow jersey on stage 2, only to abandon the following day with a stomach virus.
Following a decent showing at his favored cobbled classics, Farrar wasn’t selected to ride the Giro d’Italia, but hoped to go to the Tour de France. Then, illness once again wiped out a crucial pre-Tour period, and he missed out on another grand-tour selection.
“Tyler just got sick at the wrong moment and probably should have been on the Tour de France team, but he was just a little bit shy on form,” Garmin team manager Jonathan Vaughters told VeloNews last month. “But as opposed to curling up in a ball and crying over not getting a Tour selection, he really came back with a vengeance. He told me, as soon as he wasn’t selected for the Tour, ‘I want to do every race from the Tour on, because I need to set down a foundation. I am going to race the Tour next year.’”
Farrar wrapped up his season by finishing second in field sprints behind Mark Cavendish at the Tour of Missouri and Tom Boonen at Franco Belge, where the American also wore the leader’s jersey for one stage. He also finished fifth at Paris-Tours — taking the field sprint ahead of Robbie McEwen, Erik Zabel and Boonen —nabbed a stage win at Tour Poitou-Charentes and won a kermesse in Zwevezele, Belgium.
“When I didn’t make the Tour team, I raced the whole pro kermesse circuit in Belgium in July,” Farrar said. “Those are hard, and I was just freelancing it. But they’re a lot of fun. In August I started racing with the team again, at the Tour of Denmark and the Tour of Portugal, and the form came around really well.
“I was targeting the end of year for Franco-Belge and Paris-Tours. They’re both good for sprinters, and Franco-Belge is close to home. I typically tend to ride well in the second half of the season. And I was still really motivated. That last month, or six weeks, of the season, a lot of it is about who is still motivated at that point. Paris-Tours was a close one — I think that break was only four seconds in front of us. We were sprinting as they were sprinting.”
Farrar was at his home in Gent, Belgium, with his longtime girlfriend Stephanie when he learned that his father had been struck by a car and was in critical condition. In a matter of hours he and Stephanie were on a plane to his home in Wenatchee, Washington.
“Up until that point I was just kind of hanging out, watching cyclocross races in Belgium,” Farrar said. “We’d planned on staying more or less year-round in Belgium, and just coming back for the holidays. But my brother called me, and Stephanie and I got online right away, bought tickets, packed up our apartment and flew out the next morning.”
After a tough few weeks, Wenatchee Valley Velo organized a ride to show support for Ed Farrar. His son was on hand for the Nov. 9 ride, which drew more than 500 people and a police escort, finishing up at Central Washington Hospital, where the elder Farrar is in the ICU.
Farrar said the ride went a long way to lift his father’s spirits, as well as the rest of the family’s.
“That ride was put together pretty quickly,” he said. “I thought if 100 people showed up, that would be pretty cool, and I think 600 or so people showed. That was really good for him. It really raised his spirits to see that.”
As far as how he’s dealing with the situation, the Garmin rider said it’s been tough, but he’s coping as best he can.
“Unfortunately, that’s life,” he said. “Things happen sometimes.”
The Farrar family asks well-wishers to make donations to Wenatchee Valley Velo, PO Box 1991, Wenatchee, WA 98807, to promote bike safety and support the club's annual Wenatchee Omnium race, slated for May 16-17, 2009. Updates on Ed Farrar’s progress are posted at www.caringbridge.org/visit/edfarrar.
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